lördag, september 27, 2008

Today I went to the Cathedral in Stockholm, the Nicolai Big Church, the one where the Reformation started in Sweden in 1525. There was to be a celebration. 50 years ago on the 17th of September 1958 the priestly Ministry was opened to women. As they used to say. TheMinistry (with a tremor).

It was a rather quiet affair today, though. Perhaps due to a severe cold on the part of our Bishop Caroline, who was preaching. She painted a painting of 7 Biblical women of the Kerygma, the Message. Mary, Elizabeth, Hannah the Prophetess, the Woman by the well, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, the Woman anointing Jesus in Luke. We were also in the picture, she said.

All – men and women – who join in the call of Mary Magdalene: He is risen! Yea, He is indeed risen!

I personally, wouldn’t have minded a few trumpets and a kettle drum, for celebration’s sake, but it was rather quiet. It was not even very full, only about half. But there were even more women than usual in church. However the tension seems to have subsided. It’s not the way it was in Gothenburg when I was young. And thanks be to God for that! But it is rather interesting as a phenomenon.

I still remember when the first priest who was a woman came to Gothenburg around 1975, or so. What a row! In the 1980ies I sang for a few years in the church where she was Rector. She was really very nice, the only militancy about her being her old soldier’s name: Strid, which means Struggle. She also had a rare integrity, few approached uncalled. But what a fate…

When I came to Lund to study theology in 1993 I saw a young fellow in a corridor. Scanian fellow. Tall, loud… angry sounding (to non Scanians ; = ). His mother was a Rector further to the North, he told me one day. But Cecilia, another student was worse; her Grandmother’s sister was a priest. In Denmark. They had their first women priests in 1948.

At Lund in 1993 this non-issue was still somewhat controversial. The students studying for certain Dioceses (and their wives) were still upset.

Oddly enough I don’t remember being given any actual reasons, either in Gothenburg in the 1970ies, or later. It was simply un-thinkable. Period. But why? Anti Modernism I’d say. For over a century the church was the receptacle of various lost causes, having become more and more isolated… Socially, politically.

Klick on the Headline for pictures from this weeks Synod at Upsala featuring Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

fredag, september 12, 2008

Genesis 19:5 says sungenåmetha autoîs to say hello to them. The root in sun-g-e-nå-metha is gnå- to know. Words from this root occur many times in the OT and NT. 934 to be precise.

Of these, the aorist imperfect knew may be a euphemism for "heterosexual" copulation. This occurs 8 times in the OT (several times in Genesis 4, such as “And the man knew his wife Eve…”) and once in the NT (Matt 1:25 “And he knew her not before she had given birth to a Son…”).

Which makes possibly 9 times out of 934 – the context permitting.

But sungenåmetha is a different word: to say hello…

Outside of the Noble Art Of Exegetics, words and forms aren’t interchangeable with each other...

But, in 1955 Derek Sherwin Bailey published Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition, in which he showed that the Sodom story wasn’t sexual but addressed the regularly recurring OT commandment to Hospitality, to receive the Levite, the Poor and the Stranger – a question of survival in a Clannish pre Modern Society.

The result was that some 45 references to Sodom in both Testaments, including Jesus's own, were changed back to from sex to material in translations after 1955.

post 1955 things begin to happen with Genesis 19. Dr Calvinus’s claim “to know in the Biblical sense” had gotten too sound a thrashing that the current “translations” were changed in order to defend the traditional homo-sexualization which the academics now knew was wrong.

This has followers in different languages, such as the 1966 English Jerusalem Bible:Calling to Lot they said,”Where are the men who came to you tonight?Send them out to us so that we may abuse them.”

The Roman New American Bible, though officially after the official Roman Bible, the Versio vulgata, Catholic Publishers Incorporated, New York & Nashville, Tennessee, (1966) 1969 follows the Jerusalem Bible closely:They called to Lot and said to him,”Where are the men who came to your house tonight?Bring them out to us that we may have intima­cies with them.”

The New English Bible 1961/1970 is a paraphrasing collaboration between Oxford and Cambridge, which strong and justified criticisms have had a great influence on later “translations”, not least the last Swedish State NT 1981 and Bibel 2000. One might have thought that Oxford and Cambridge in collaboration should have come up with something useful, but the opposite is true: the more cooks, the worse the soup:They called to Lot and asked him where the men were who had entered his house that night.”Bring them out” they shouted,”so that we can have intercourse with them.”

Good News Bible; Today’s English Version 1976, a ”common Language” paraphrase; in an impoverished language, not unlike that of NT 1981 – which occasionally translates TEV versions, not the Text – and meant for sectas, USA Free church proselyting in Latin America. Interestingly enough the TEV adds the Renaissance Academic interpretation after the Text as a gloss:They called out to Lot and asked,”Where are the men who came to stay with you tonight?Bring them out to us ína syngenåmetha autoîs.“The men of Sodom wanted to have sex with them.Bibel 2000 dramatises:De ropade till Lot kaì élegon pròs aitòn:Var är männen som kom till dig i kväll?Skicka ut dem till oss, vi skall ligga med dem.

This means that the NT 1981 versions in 1 Cor 6:9-11 and alias 1 Tim 1:10 were changed in Bibel 2000! There are in fact a few such very interesting changes – but such are officially denied…

A couple of decades later, in the 1976 Today’s English Version (Good News Bible) Judges 19:22 and the Letter of alias Jude, verse 7 joined in. And in 1981 the new Swedish State homosexualized also 1 Thess 4:6 (which in the latest Danish Bible still addresses Honesty in Commerce between Christians… ; = )

ante Bailey – and still correct – is the 1947 Revised Standard Version of the New York Bible societies:and they called to Lot,”Where are the men who came to you tonight?Bring them out to us, that we may know them.”

It is interesting to see that the various ”translations” post 1955 differ so fatally, even where they agree… They defend the same old erroneous interpretation, but happen to be produced independently of each other, out of different traditions of translation, in different ecclesiastical surroundings.

Renaissance Volkssprache translations don’t expose themselves to such calamities nearly as openly, because they are made from the same “original”, the Scholastic Versio vulgata of Paris.

The horrid story of Judges 19 to 21, which starts as a paraphrase on Genesis 19 but turns into something very different, ethnical cleansing in the manner of the Ezraic, Persian inspired, “reform” of BC 398 can perhaps better wait 'til yet another time…

Allegory is an imagery, where only the back-side counts. It permits the in-and-out-reading of just-any-thing.

Allegory was developed in the centuries BC by the academics at the Museiwn to de-sexualise Homer’s’ Odyssey and Iliad – the amorous adventures of the Olympian un-deadly were un-tasteful to the very serious Alexandrian philosophers…

But Filon of Alexandria (dead sometime after 40) and later “Christian” Neo Platonists have used (abuse) it to sexualise the holy scriptures of the Bible.

As you understand, in bygone days one did not have to worry about “Biblical proofs” – allegory was enough in itself.

The craving for ”proofs” only came with the new Neo Platonism, and Indo European Integrism however (something also found in, particularly Egyptian, Islam) of Neo Humanism: with the renewed Renaissance of the 16th century.

The situation has become much worse in our days, especially in Anglican churches in the 20th century due to the Inerrantism of the American Sects (the word Inerrantism is not even known in these parts) which originated around 1610 with Arminianism a Dutch Calvinist Sect, and later immigrated to America.

Indo European Integrism was problematic to Dr-at-Law Johannes Calvinus.

San Pietro had coined the word sodomia as a general reference to Luxuria; the Superbia, Greed, Sloth and so on of Sodom… manifested in the disdain of its inhabitants for the Sacred Commandment to Hospitality to the Levite, the Poor and the Stranger – namely the visiting Angels.

Filo of Alexandria may have sexualised the Sodom story in his efforts to present Judaism to his anti Semitic colleagues as more anti sex than Philosophy itself, but hardly anyone followed suit for the next 1500 years.

And a Jewish heretic philosopher around BC wasn’t much in the eyes of the world in Calvinus’ Time… (in the 20th century, when the academic teachings of the 2nd Millennium have begun to be questioned, Filon has become all the more popular – almost an honorary Father of the Church).

So, in order to join San Pietro’s Concept sodomia – which remained for very long a squarely “Hetero-“sexual category – to Ganymedes, Dr Johannes invented a linguistic ruse “to know in the Biblical sense”.

When Scripture and Teaching must concord – experience shows that it will be Scripture which is accommodated to Teaching...

From Peter Lombard’s pupils comes the Scholastic re-working of the Old Latin translation (2nd century North Africa ff), to accord with the versions used by Peter in the Sentences, complete with chapters and all and finished in the 1210s.

In 1243 it was called Versio vulgata; the usual version (in Paris).

The order and the chapters of the Parisian Versio vulgata remain to this day, supplied with verse-numbers from Etienne’s 1555 Geneva Bible.

The Parisian Versio vulgata was based largely on the text of Alcwin of Northumberland c:a800, in a small but handy format, in gothic lettering, but contains Philosophical changes to theTexts dating back to Ambrosius of Milan and other early Platonist Academics in church offices. The Cambridge History of the Bible Vol. 2 (1969) tells about how the words in caelis wereomitted from Matt 18:10 quia angeli eorum in caelis semper vident faciem patris mei in orderto put the guardian angels firmly on earth, following the views of Hieronimus.

A similar change was made in Luke 12:35 Sint lumbi vestri praecincti et lucernae ardenteswhere in manibus vestris in your hands was added because Gregory the Great and Bede had thought the lamps signified good works… (few of those in the Bible).

Most additions like these have been removed from the latest edition of the Versio vulgata, the Paul VI 1978 (whereas the extra bed in Luke 5:25 is still around in the 2000 Swedish State;=)

Nevertheless, Maître Pierre wrote a couple of writs called Verbum abbreviatum; A ShortWord, and De vitio sodomitico; On the Sodomitic Sin, in which he invented a great number ofverses against Ganymedes – for, contrary to San Pietro, some 130 years earlier – Maître Pierrewas anti Gay. He didn’t care as much about clerks, as about Ganymedes.

Most of these "proofs" have had to be abandoned with Time – but as a compensation, anti Modern translators have invented several new ones in the late 20th Century.

Reading Leviticus 18:22 – Maître Pierre found the Idea of the Church Apostate, still alive and kicking in today’s anti Modernism. For to his dismay, he realized that the Church had not once supported the Gnosticist teachings (Sperm = Soul) of Neo Platonism.

Indeed She resisted them up to c:a 1300 (which Maître Pierre found shocking: How can it be, he asked, that the Church leaves that unpunished which the Lord punished so harshly? And as the Levites punished, may She punish equally! The rest presents itself...

And they burned people in the squares because Leviticus forbade the spilling of blood.

Maître Pierre was also the first since Johannes Chrysostomos to believe that Romans 1:26-27 talked about homosexuals, instead of bisexuals on the loose.

The theologians of the 1st Millennium agreed (pace Johannes Chrysostomos) that Romans 1:26-27 was about hetero-sexuals who exchanged what they had, for what they didn’t have. The important word in Romans 1:19-25/26-27/28-32 being ällaksan; change, (in the gloss met-ällaksan: ex-change) and Neo Platonist John Chrysostomos underlined (in his note to verse 1:27 ou gàr eipen oti ärasthäsan (from Eros) kaì epethumäsan allälån), that the gloss does not talk about persons who are enamoured and desire each other, but persons burning with Lust.

To burn with Lust was of course something utterly despicable to the very serious Alexandrians, but Note! that John takes for granted that:

1) persons of the same sex do fall in love desiring each other, and2) the gloss 1:26-27 isn’t about this.

(not to mention, that before Johannes Chrysostomos no one thought verse 26 address lesbians– and very few afterwards, until Maître Pierre ; = )

With the help of extreme 1179 Lateran III, the 1210 Paris Council, and 1215 Lateran IVsodomitas became one of the 6 Phantom categories (3 theological, 3 social) to be excludedfrom the Church, as they were excluded from Society:

Jews, Muslims, Heretics,Bastards (children out of wedlock, but aimed at Priests sons), Lepers and Sodomitas.

Repentance within a year and a day, that is next Thursday before Easter, at the latest, wasrequired. Otherwise – Heraus!

A closer inspection reveals that these categories are impossible to define (who is a Jew? Leprosy can’t be diagnosed without difficulty even today…) but this is what makes them eminently suited for Oppression, for crowd control… But mark! that the persecution of the 6 Minorities really was all about the Social Disciplining of the Majority.

With Time, the 6 Phantom categories introduced themselves into most legal systems – but far from in all. And with the new hate crime legislations after 1945 this development is being reversed. For apart from Leprosy (which has virtally disappeared from developed countries), the minorities which are considered objects for particular protection in late modernity, are precisely those that Laterans III and IV most vilely excluded from Society.

Exegetically, not the least interesting with these High Medieval Social Policies is the Scholastics’ sloppy method. They did precisely what everybody (officially) agree is not to be done. They took a verse here and there, allegorizing them in order to transform their Alexandrian ideas into novel Social, Political and Moral policies.

According to San Pietro’s writ to the Bishop of Rome, the problem without procreative intent had become much worsened since Christianity arrived on the scene, being especially rampant in monasteries (although, apparently, not in his own, the Fonte Avellana ;=) Thus San Pietro demanded from Leo IX that all priests and monks who – if only once – had ejaculated, should be put into isolation.

But at this hour in Time, around 1050, only Anchorites (recluses) endured (self imposed) isolation – monasteries had Dormitories for their professed – and lay (= serfs) – members.

San Pietro classified his sodomia according to method: 1. with one self; 2. with somebody else (man, woman, child, animal); 3. inter femore (between the buttocks – it remains unclear exactly what this is); and finally 4. what we would call anal copulation.

And in accordance with the idea of Traducianism it was the person who Spilled Semen who was the culprit.

Mutuality didn’t exist for this beaten child.

Nothing of this had anything to do with homosexuality the way we define it, but was about (hetero-sexual) Monks and Priests, particularly married Priests, declared Lateran IV in 1215.

In 1139 Lateran II hade ordained Celibacy Mandatory for Priests, declaring their marriages invalid and the Bastardy of their sons. That is, they were excluded from the inheritance. Daughters weren’t mentioned. That a daughter could inherit apparently didn’t occur to messrs Neo Platonists, although daughters kept their right to inherit in all lands throught the 13th century, and in most through the 14th… In some to this day.

The Spilling of Semen was the Horror at least in Academic circles. Sperm being perceived as the soul of the (male) Academic, inherited from Ol’ Adam (= Traducianism) and this little nous was in strange ways twinned to the Big NOUS; The Highest Being of the Neo Platonists, their a-personal divinity (it is this, The Highest Being not being a theòs, that makes Philosophy not a theología but a filo-sofía; a Love of (absolute) Truth.

Consequently, from the 10th century the word malakós in 1 Cor 6:9 became important, it was henceforth claimed – in the West as in the East – to refer to “men who spill their Semen”.

The importance of this propaganda is made clear by the fact that malakós in Modern Greek as come to mean masturbation. For both women and men…

But in itself malakós means ”soft”. It is used of textiles. So in Luke 7:25 and Matt 11:8, when Jesus from Nazareth speaks about his cousin John the Baptist: Whom did you go out to see? A man in soft clothing? Such are found in Palaces…

Luke 7:25 and Matt 11:8 are the only 2 places in the NT, where malakós is (almost) correctly translated. The Swedish State 1917 has fine clothes, NT 1981 (= 1982) and Bible 2000 the same.

But then, the meaning cannot be mistaken…

In 1 Cor 6:9 the word is used in a secondary sense: ”sloppy” – referring to ”sloppy” Husbanders (think Count Almaviva in Figaro). But that one can wait until an other time…

In 1966 malakós was dramatically re-interpreted in Pater Zerwick’s Roman Analysis philologicaNovi Testamenti graeci from masturbation, a predominantly hetero-sexual activity, to homo-sexual “Orientation” as identity, in late 20th century fashion; “passive” gay man.

It was now clamed to be a synonym for the (authentic) Greek loan in Latin catamita (a distortion of Ganymedes, the name of the shepherd abducted by Zeus in the form of an eagle).

At the same time the Abstinence/Chastity Paradigm of 10 century Academia “men who masturbate” lingers on in the New Catholic Encyclopaedia of the same year (1966) – and, naturally, in the East. But that one can wait until an other time…

But back to Leo IX. He doesn’t seem to have been at all amused by San Pietro and his conspirational theories, but gave him a wholesome trashing in a 1051 bull with the interesting name Nos humanius agentes Us acting (more) humanely… in which he rejected San Pietro’s methods 1, 2, and 3...

However, this rejection – and the remaining nr 4: anal copulation (something already Justinian in his battles with the Byzantine Church had made a Crime against the State castrating oppositional Monks) – a century later, on the left banks of Paris, turned San Pietro’s novel Concept (he had seen sodomitas as an identity, as the “incurable” Inhabitants of an abstract Sodom…) into a hazard for contemporary Ganymedes; the gay sub culture of the Metropolis of the day.

Important in this context is a figure, called Maître Pierre Chanteur (Peter Cantor, for you lot) having sometimes been Singing Master, thus also School master, at Nôtre Dame in Paris.

Like the pupils of a previous School Master, Petrus Lombardus, Bishop of Paris 1159-1160, whose Neo Platonist “teaching” had been rejected as heretical by the 1164 Provincial Council of Sens, Maître Pierre was ousted from the Cathedral school, dying c:a 1197 in one of Emperor Louis’ “reformed” Benedictine monasteries (requiring quarterings…), somewhere on the Loire.

Upon leaving Nôtre Dame Peter Lombard’s former pupils had opened their own place rivegauche – which in 1200 became la Sorbonne (le Sorbon was the fellow they got the house from in 1257) – where they busied themselves with Moorish Aristotelian Averroës (= ibn Rushd) and later with his enemy Tomas ab Aquino, who a century later still worked on Peter Lombardus’ famous Compendium; his 4 Books of Sentences… (Trinity in Book I, Creation in Book II, Christ the savior of fallen Creation in Book III, the Sacraments in book IV).

Today I shall write about two things that originally had nothing to do with each other, namely the Sodom story in Genesis 18-19 and sodomia as a word for Homosexuality (and a few other things)…

1050 or thereabouts, a rather beaten child by the name of Pietro Damiani (*1107 †1072) invented the Concept sodomia in his Liber gomorrhianus a writ dedicated to the first “Reform” Pope, Leo IX (Bruno von Egisheim-Dagsburg, Bishop of Rome 1048-1054). His errand was the Spilling of Semen (particularly by Priests and Monks) without an intent to procreate.

According to Neo Platonist Academics this was far worse than murder, because it threw the un-baptised souls of little boys (the Academics believed Semen consisted of little ready-made miniature boys) into Limbo; the place wherefrom Heavenly Bliss could be beheld by the un-baptised, but not enjoyed... (Rumours say that Benedict XVI is planning to skip this Limbo, as Tridentinum abolished Purgatory).

Consequently Luxuria was a sub-division of the changed Moral (and therefore disciplining) Concept “Sin” (from German Sind Flut; the Great Flood in Genesis 8) of the new Carolingian State Ideology, imported from State Church Byzantion:

Superbia, Greed, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, Wrath, and Envy.

In the Bible this wanting on the part of humans to be God-like is invariably called by various archery terms, in Greek amartía: “missing the mark”, shooting over the goal, miss-stepping, from trying too much...

It may be pointed out for us in late modernity, who have been taught to see “sex” (a Modern to late modern category) everywhere, that it is only the third of these; Concupiscentia – which may be sexual…

In the interest of Empire Crowd control the 12th century Parisian changes in the Latin translation (2nd to 3rd century North Africa) Versio vulgataaddedConcupiscentia to the Text of Colossians 3:5, turning 10th Commandment epithumía; (material) Greed, into Luxuria; Lust.

Luxuria itself was added to Galatians 5:19…

For San Pietro and other adherents of Emperor Louis’ thePious (†843) ecclesiastical “Reforms”, it was necessary for office holders to contain their Semen – especially since Abstinence; the self-imposed Martyrium of the Neo Platonist Academic, gave them auctoritas over the lay…

An intent to procreate was the only possible excuse for the Spilling of Semen.

Un-surprisingly, according to Johannes Chrysostomos (†407) and other Neo Platonists, (monogamous hetero-)Marriage was a lesser celibacy. This basically Gnosticist view lasted till about 1970, when Hetero-sex suddenly was transmogrified into God’s particular Gift to Adam and Eve (Focus on the Family and others…)

I distinctly remember how chocked I was (in 1968) when I first heard this anti Modern fabrication from my confirmation pastor (he was also, although a Priest in the Church of Sweden, appointed as Pastor of the Moravian (= 19th century Pietist) Brothers in Gothenburg).

onsdag, september 10, 2008

This is an answer to a comment (c:a nr 59) by Ben W on Thinking Anglicans (klick on the head-line)

Ben W wrote: “On Sodom, the wider issue is hospitality, but as part of that we get the action of the men of Sodom toward "the men" who have come to visit (Gen 19:5). The hospitality is seen precisely in how they responded to these visitors! They demand, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them" (to know here – the same term regularly used when a man and woman have sexual relations). That is the key event here, from it the other terrible events unfold. Lot to avoid this dreadful violation of the visitors – "I beg you ... do not act so wickedly" v 7 – looks for a way out.

So you want say, "The sin of Sodom wasn't sexual...?" Read it for yourself! What happened to Lot's daughters was evil piled on this evil (whether Lot thought that they would restrain themselves because the daughters were part of and so with some support in this community is not clear – he himself was threatened v 9b, clearly a desperate act). We can say the sin was sexual from first to last but hardly "not sexual"!”

Dear Ben W,

This is all wrong, but very often claimed. And this claim is a late modern “Homo”-sexualization. It is absent from all elder translations however. It is the late modern fixation with sex, and anti Modern Social Politics.

It appears for the first time after 1955 (DS Bailey’s book Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition – only that I would say that this tradition is Hellenist/Platonist/Academic, but n o t Christian.

Dr Bailey showed convincingly that the ("hetero"-)sexualization of the Sodom story is “intertestamental”. It appears in Hellenist and Jewish Hellenist literature (which also is Hellenist, but not Jewish) around the year 0, such as philosophical renegade Filon of Alexandria and double-traitor “Flavius” Josephus, né Levi.

The result was that some 45 references to Sodom and Gomorra in both Testaments were changed back in most translations after 1955 from “sexual” to material, including Jesus’ own 2 in the Gospels.

However, from 1961 (Bible de Jérusalem, the translation of the French Dominicans from the Codex sinaïticus; La Sainte Bible, traduite en français sous la direction de l’École Biblique de Jérusalem), to underpin the exploded dogmatisms new passages (which never had been associated with the Sodom story) were “homo”-sexualised, such as Judges 19:5 (gnåmen autois) and (the most scandalous change of all) Gnosticist Letter of Jude verse 7 (sarkòs etéras) (both TEV). Others – namely the Scholastic “proofs” post Lateran II 1139 – followed suit after 1970, being changed from "proving" clerical Abstinences to anti Gay.

However, sun-g-e-nå-me-tha autois in Genesis 19:5 means to say hello to them. It is a different word from the root gnå- than the gnå-men; to know, in Judges 19:22.

The original manipulation (= the false claim that sun-g-e-nå-me-tha autois mean “to know in the Biblical sense”) seems to be Renaissance; Dr Calvinus himself.

The corresponding claim (also wrong) about late Persian Judges 19-20 is post 1970, unheard of before Dr Bailey.

Words from the root gnå- occur 934 times in the OT, euphemistically referring (circumstances permitting) to Hetero-sexual copulation 8 times in the younger parts of the OT, such as Genesis 4:1 “And Adam k n e w his wife Eve…" [probably not part of the original OT because the eldest existing LXX, the Codex vaticanus (early 300s) starts only in Genesis 46:8 Taûta dè tà onómina tån huôn Josäf tån eisälthónton eis Aïgypton… These are the names of the Sons of Joseph who went down to Egypt…) and Kings, and (perhaps) once in the NT (Matt 1:24 “And he didn’t k n o w his wife before she had given birth to a Son…”)].

Thus a possible total of 9 times out of 934. That is a frequency of less than 1 %! So NOT “the same term regularly used“ as Ben W calls it.

In Matt 1:24 the word used is the aorist e-g-í-nå-sken autón – the change of the -e- to -i- is late Koíne; 2nd century, as is Matt on the whole.

In fact, Dr Calvinus’ innovation “To know in the Biblical sense“ makes this the first Dynamic Equivalence translation.

The Swedish State translation 1981 (made by 2 converts to Rome – one secret ;=) changes also 1 Thess 4:4-8, which in the Danish Bible still refers to Honesty in Commerce, but was used from Lateran II 1139 for Consecrations and Ordinations, “proving” Mandatory Abstinence – and this even in the Church of Sweden after the Reformation (Church Ordinance of 1571).

So Genesis 18 and 19 is about the commandment to Sacred Hospitality “under the shadow of my roof” towards “the Levite, the poor and the Stranger” – practically a condition of survival for peopåle outside the Clans, for those excluded from clannish pre Modern Societies. According to (questionable) legends (folk-etymologies explaining the place-names “the burnt”, the devastated”) the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah didn’t.

Consequently, what has been stressed in Jewish tradition is Abrahams repeated pleas to save the City if even there was o n e righteous human in it, not sex. As Dr Bailey showed so convincingly as to de-sexualise most translations of the 45 references to Sodom, the (Hetero)-sexualization is Hellenist. So is the Gnostic idea of the “Wives of Sodom running after strange flesh” (the Angels). Despite Platonist influence, it has never been anything like Kosher.

But to the everlasting shame of Modern Academia the sexualization (and the late modern canonization of Messrs Filo and Josephus as some kind of honorary Fathers of the Church) has survived.

Ben W cites: "I beg you ... do not act so wickedly" v 7”

This is Jewish rhetoric, dear Ben. The Bible comes from a different culture, with different mores (Think the way Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman in the Gospel). The point still is the Sacredness of Hospitality “under the shadow of my roof” towards “the Levite, the Poor and the Stranger”.

So Loot says verse 7 “Don’t do this to me!” This aims to show the inhabitants how absurd it is to infringe on Sacred Hospitality.

Un-surprisingly “so wickedly” is not in the Text; making it an addition by dishonest translators (for obvious reasons ; = )

Genesis 19 does not address the late modern category of “sex” but the pre Modern one of Hospitality “under the shadow of my roof”. There is no rape in the story, only a suggested one (by Loot), which, however – Loot being the Pater familias – isn’t rape according to pre Modern sensibilities, cf. Abraham delivering Sarah to Pharaoh in Genesis 12:15, and to Abimelek in Genesis 20:2, and Isaac delivering Rebecca in 26:7 (also cf. a case when this happened without the Pater familias’ permission in alias John 8, in originally Luke 21:39ff).

However, the rape suggested by Loot in Genesis 19:8 never comes off. To claim that the Sodom story is about rape or “sex” is, resolutely, an anti Modern Academic fantasy. An intentional invention, followed by forging the sacred Text.

Conclusion; in the Bible the sin of Sodom isn't sexual which Dr Bailey showed so convincingly that the translators changed their erroneous translations of the 45 references, from “sex” to material.

Anti Modern Socio-Political Policies (Roman and American Calvinist), of which these un-wisely suggested "moratoria" is a part, are built on very loose sands, indeed.